COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS

 Another holiday newsletter:

COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS NEWSLETTER

February 2026

If you can imagine Christmas Island as a lump of greenery with a sharp black crunchy volcanic fringe, then for the Cocos (Keeling) Islands you have to be a little more imaginative. Take a hula hoop. Break it up into 27 randomly sized pieces but lay it out to keep the circle shape. Then surround it by a coral reef and fill the inside with water and create a large lagoon. 

We stayed on West Island in a comfortable house 250 metres from the seaside and 250 metres from the lagoon with a runway between us and the lagoon. And that’s the widest part of the island. Are you starting to get the picture?

Christmas and Cocos Islands are nearly 1,000 miles apart in the Indian Ocean but they are connected through history and culture. Those of you who are around my age and grew up in WA will know the name Clunies-Ross. There were shocking headlines in the newspapers in the 1970s about slave labour on Cocos which wasn’t quite the case but the story of the Clunies-Ross started in an uncomfortable relationship with a man called Alexander Hare who did keep slaves. In fact, it was because he wanted to keep on keeping slaves that he got as far away from civilisation as possible because the British were planning to abolish slavery which they finally did in 1833. Hare took his slaves (including a harem) to Direction Island, part of the Cocos Islands and a colleague, John Clunies-Ross, ended up on South island in the same system. Hare eventually gave up but John and his sons and their sons stayed on and on. Our landlady for this visit was a Clunies-Ross.

The Clunies-Ross family made their living through the export of copra and shipping but you can only do the former in a financially viable way if you have indentured labour to whom you pay very little so from 1825 to the mid-1970s, people of Malay heritage provided that labour. Whereas on Christmas Island, the descendants of those people life in a very multicultural community, on Cocos, the Malay Muslim people live on Home Island (population 450) and the Anglos (and the tourists) live on West Island (population 140). There are only 144 beds for tourists on the island but the West Island population is about to double because the Australian government is extending and heightening the runway. The day we left was the first day of the delivery of over 100 multi-occupant temporary housing units for that exercise. A rather large investment of time and money for an island that is scheduled to disappear under water by 2068. Apparently the Australian Federal Police are worried about the impact of all those new people on the crime rate which, I can only imagine, is currently next to zero. We were told to leave the keys in the car and weren’t even given keys to the house.

Back to the Clunies-Ross family. They did claim ownership of these unpeopled islands but they also wanted protection from the British which the Admiralty was initially unwilling to provide. Why both spending money on these tiny islands in the middle of nowhere? And then one day Captain Fremantle turned up to annexe them for the Brits. But the joke was on him because he went to wrong Cocos Islands. He was supposed to go to some in the Andaman Sea!

Eventually, Australia took control of the islands and faced with outrage over the way the Cocos Malays were treated, forced the fifth generation of Clunies-Ross to sell them. We did visit Home Island and spent an interesting day with a local talking about history and their current lives – modest houses but each with at least one boat and one buggy to get around. It made for an interesting comparison with the old Clunies-Ross residence, Oceania House, which you can now rent via Airbnb. Built last century, it must have made a profound comparison with the huts made out of coconut fronds inhabited by their Malay workers just 100 metres away.

Part of the cultural change since Australia took over is one that I find problematic. For decades, there was a light touch in the practice of Islam including some animist beliefs but more recently people have come to the island and told people they weren’t practising their religion properly. The community has now taken on a stricter version with the women all wearing black headscarves and in same cases black face coverings as well. A ridiculous way to dress in a climate where the temperatures varied from maximum 29 to minimum 28 degrees Celsius and where their grandmothers wore sarongs.

Enough of the history and the culture. What did we actually do? It’s somewhat ironic that a circle of islands surrounded by water both inside and out, is not well served for a simple swim. Much of the island is sandbagged because it’s only 10 feet (3 metres) above sea level and so there are limited spaces to get to an ocean side beach. The lagoon is beautiful but shallow, tidal and full of currents. Rather than swim, you do a rather fast drift. But of course we went into the water whenever we could: snorkelling at Trannies Beach on West Island, snorkelling in the rain on Direction Island, drift swimming at the Yacht Club beach, drift snorkelling at Pulu Maraya and South Island and just floating in the water at Pula Blan. 

And we also spent time on the water – ferries to Home and Direction Islands and motorised canoe trips to see turtles (I counted over 20 plus during our couple of hours in the lagoon) and to the southern islands. I think my most relaxing moment was mid-way through the latter trip where they served glasses of champagne (I wasn’t ‘driving’ the canoe) and after some refreshing sips, I just went and lay in the light sparkling aqua water floating above white coral sand with a few little fish dashing underneath me.

There weren’t as many jungle walks for Sebastian to do but there were still blue tailed skinks to find and an array of hermit crabs of colours ranging from sandy through bronze, red to purple.  Bird life is completely different to Christmas Island. More water birds on land than soaring above us such as noddies and ducks and herons. The landscape is different as well as the “jungles” are really old coconut plantations where people were expected to husk 300-400 coconuts per day.

Given the small population on West Island, the range of food options where even less than on Christmas Island. When you get off the plane, you’re handed a sheet of paper with the opening hours and the options. I thought I’d been clever and booked a restaurant in advance but they didn’t get enough bookings so didn’t bother opening. For the only regular alternative, a rather random buffet run by some ladies from Home Island, if you didn’t put your name on the whiteboard outside by 3pm, you ran the risk of not getting a meal. On the two evenings that planes come in, you could get (great) pizzas from a little shop that also sold sour dough bread a couple of times a week, and on another couple of days, some blokes at the Cocos Club provided a meal. We had been warned and so packed some pasta and sauce and rice and so cooked at home a couple of times. The best lunch was a homecooked Malay meal on Home Island and the best flavour was honey made by bees sipping on coconut trees. 

Since we’ve come back, people have asked whether the trip was worthwhile. The answer depends on what you want from a holiday. If you want fancy resorts and cocktails by the pool, this is not for you. If you want gourmet dining and shopping, this is not for you. If you love fishing and boating and diving, this is absolutely the holiday for you. As for me, I enjoyed the warmth and the sunsets, the brilliantly coloured fish and even the little reef sharks, the history and colours of the water. Could I live there? Absolutely not. Would I go back there? Properly not. Did I enjoy the holiday? Yes, because who could resist those vistas of crystal clear aquamarine water. 

If you want more information about Cocos (Keeling) Islands, check this website: https://cocoskeelingislands.com.au/about/